Dusk
by The Fraternal Brothers
Summary: Otaria, twenty years after the destruction of Karona.  A new Cabal Patriarch has risen and threatens to bring Otaria to its knees before him.  If he succeeds, only darkness lies ahead. Witness the dusk of Otaria.
1. Chapter 1

Whaddup? It's the Fraternal Brothers, stating that, while we would desperately like to be, we are in no way, shape, or form employed by Wizards of the Coast contractually nor in a freelance manner. As such, we have absolutely no legal bearing on Magic: the Gathering, nor it on us. This is an unauthorized fanfiction by us and we have no intention of utilizing this to make any money for ourselves, potentially leeching it from Wizards of the Coast. Good? Good.

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Dusk

Chapter 1 (Written exclusively by A Little Bird, proofread and submitted by Something Awesome)

"The law is always upheld in Wirewood; innocence and guilt are minor details."

Lieutenant Vethalo stood watch over Wirewood Keep as he always did at this time, four o'clock to midnight, his usual shift. He was the tallest elf in Wirewood and at five feet, ten inches he literally stood watch _over_ all of the prisoners. He had long, dark green hair that fell almost halfway down his back, pulled up in a ponytail, which sat comfortably under his leather helm, which in turn rested under the hood of his cloak. His skin was tinged green and he had very little facial hair to speak of apart from a thin moustache that most elves his age wore. He was fairly young, only about one-hundred-and-twenty, and looked even younger. All in all, Vethalo was a fairly handsome elf. Then again, it was rare to find an elf that wasn't. But even so, Vethalo had a built, almost muscular frame that the average elf lacked. He found it useful in law enforcement to be athletic.

Vethalo stood tall and shuffled anxiously in his leather armor, the earthy greens and browns of which kept him safely hidden from view. This, when coupled with the moss growing on it, made him nearly indistinguishable from the tree Wirewood Keep was built in, and in the waning light of the forest sunset, he would be surely be impossible to find. This was good, because all the day's congratulations were growing tired.

A few too many times during the evening a passing guard, lawmage, and even once the warden took a minute out of his or her busy schedule to congratulate Vethalo. He puffed out his chest slightly less than usual, in a vain effort to conceal the heroism badge he'd earned the day before. Vethalo had saved a visiting human woman from almost certain death. He didn't want the badge though. He had only been doing his job, as any other enforcer would have. But he was required to wear it, likely intended to boost the Wirewood Military's image.

Not that it needed that much boosting. And very few would see the badge, at any rate. Vethalo stayed, for the most part, right where he was at that exact moment, save for a ten-to-twenty minute sector patrol at the end of every hour. It was on one of these patrols that he had seen the human visitor in trouble. The woman had been in a losing tussle with a bandit who seemed intent on acquiring her necklace. The bandit had the woman pinned down to the platform; the wooden logs strapped together to make one of the many floors of Wirewood's treetop civilization. Vethalo had recognized the bandit as a Shadowclan Chief by his entirely black garb and white mask with an "X" written on it in wolf blood.

The Shadowclan were a relatively large bandit clan among the scattered gangs of Wirewood forest's floor. This was where basically every gang made their home. And who could blame them for it? They were thousands of feet below the treetop civilization, concealed from any unlikely invaders by the lack of light, but still illuminated enough to go about their fiendish business by what little light did manage to filter through the giant leaves and find its way to the moist earth. Coupled with that all the giant forest floor beasts a gang could ever need to eat and at the same time hone hunting, sneaking, and killing skills created the perfect environment for all this unlawful activity on the understory.

That is, the perfect environment to be a complete coward, as far as Vethalo was concerned. And, for that matter, as far as any respectable citizen of the forest was concerned. The Shadowclan and all of their minor offshoots were nothing more than scoundrels, despicable bottom-feeders, and Vethalo hated every last one them. That's why he had come in to work today, despite it being his usual day off, for as sure as Vethalo had seventy-eight years in law enforcement, the Shadowclan Chief would be back.

The sun was nearly set; only a hint of reddish purple remained, barely streaking the edge of the horizon. Vethalo anxiously thumbed the hilt of his dagger, occasionally pulling it out and running his finger down the edge, feeling it snake back and forth. This curved dagger was his favorite. Named Vaerdelyn, he had received it when he made fifty years on the force, and it had seen more fights, heard more screams, and felt more throats than most of the officers he worked with.

If the Shadowclan Chief would return tonight, it would be soon. Vethalo began to grow restless. Thoughts of the combat that may or may not have been right around the corner crept into his mind. He saw himself letting the chief slip away again, as he had the day before, an unacceptable failure in his mind. Suddenly, the anxiety overcame Vethalo and he began to neurotically check through all his equipment.

Sweeping his dark brown cloak aside, Vethalo checked through all his weapons. His thin-bladed longsword hung at his left side, as always, and his dagger was strapped to his right thigh. His bow and quiver were tightly fastened to his back by thick straps of leather, buckled across his chest. He reached his arm back to unnecessarily count the arrows in his quiver. He knew there would be twenty-four, as he always loaded to maximum at the beginning of his shift, and he hadn't fired a shot all day. Still, he thought, it was best to check. He was wrong.

As Vethalo lifted his right arm to count his arrows, a heavy black boot came crashing into his ribcage. It knocked him to the ground instantly, but he had his wits about him. On the way down, he grabbed the ankle of his assailant. He was not about to let the attacker go twice. The elf managed to kick free of Vethalo's grip somehow, but didn't flee. Instead he assumed a defensive stance, his sword drawn.

Vethalo saw the familiar wolf's-blood "X" and knew that this was the same attacker from the day before. He wasn't sure, however, how to take this news. While his attacker's reluctance to flee meant that he was not likely to lose him again, it also meant that the attacker wanted a fight, or at least whatever he was after was worth the risk. And the Shadowclan were smart, if spineless. A Shadowbandit, especially a Chief would not readily pick a fight with someone they weren't sure they could kill, or at the very least, direly maim.

Vethalo decided at this point that only one of them would walk away from this fight. He took his longsword in hand and waved it back and forth, in what seemed to be a menacing style, for the assailant backed off ever so slightly.

Vethalo decided to go for a trick. He altered his stance, bit by minuscule bit, until it was a completely offensive stance. Then, he lunged with his sword. Not nearly enough to actually make contact, but enough to spark a self-preservation reflex. As he had been counting on, the bandit, rather than retreat, leaned back, and safely out of the blades path. Right behind the whoosh of the blade, Vethalo kicked his foot out and swung it behind the bandit's rear ankle. The bandit, who was already leaning backward, fell flat on his back.

Vethalo flew down onto his attacker, dropping his sword and planting the heels of his hands firmly on the wrists of his opponent. Now, it was a wrestling match, and one where Vethalo was clearly at an advantage. He had six whole inches on this elf, and probably forty-five pounds, by his estimate. The elf was surprisingly strong, however, and reversed their postures, albeit with a great deal of effort. Vethalo rolled them over again, to where the fight was now dangerously near the edge of the platform, and he found himself once more staring down into the haunting, off-white mask he had so long been trained to hate.

With a sudden surge of adrenaline, Vethalo felt his feet leave the ground, and his attacker's feet meet his stomach. He was in the air, and then suddenly on his back, with his head hanging over the several thousand-foot drop to the cold forest floor below. He quickly got to his feet, and made his way over to his sword. His opponent, now back on his feet, had long since recovered his own blade.

The unnamed attacker lunged, sword first, and Vethalo's blade met his with a clang. They were locked now, Vethalo's right hand on the handle of his sword and his left hand palm up, wrist reinforcing his pressure against the bandit's grip. The bandit pulled his sword away, expecting Vethalo to stumble forward, but no such luck. At this, he ran the last few remaining steps to the edge of the platform, and leapt across to another platform, the Roc landing platform, some forty feet away. Vethalo was stunned, but continued to pursue, using the rope bridge while his foe untied a Roc from its perch.

The giant, blue and white bird's feathers ruffled and it spread its wings to their full twenty-foot wingspan. Vethalo didn't make it to the platform in time to board the same Roc, but he slashed the ropes on another one and followed close behind.

It wasn't long before the two fighters were above the treetops. Vethalo looked back briefly and saw the shrinking tower that was Wirewood Keep, reaching up, even through the clouds above them. As he dipped, dove and swerved to keep up with his attacker, he realized what he was dealing with. This was an experienced fighter and a skillful Roc rider, and Vethalo was starting to doubt that he could keep the pace, even if they _did_ land again. He was losing this race, and the gap between him and the bandit was rapidly widening. He could see the attacker's silhouette against the glowing white of the waning moon straight ahead.

Vethalo spurred his bird onward and was closing in on the enemy Roc when its rider turned around and fired one single arrow behind him and into Vethalo's Roc's wing. Then, satisfied that Vethalo was to crash and die, he squeezed his own Roc with his knees and dove beneath the treetops.

Vethalo began to think that this was not the experienced combatant he had previously thought. The smart thing for his enemy to do would've been to pull up and make for the clouds, as Vethalo was losing height and this would have put distance between them. As it was, the bandit didn't do the smart thing, and Vethalo certainly wasn't complaining. His Roc, struggling to remain in the air, was now almost directly above the bandit's.

Vethalo made his move. He stood on his Roc's back and jumped, feet first off of it. He aimed to land crouched on the back of the enemy Roc, aware of the pain landing sitting would cause. As gravity closed the gap between him and his target, the Roc took a nosedive, and it became clear to Vethalo that he was not going to hit his target. Instead, his heels crashed into the upper back and neck of the bandit, and they both continued to fall down into the forest.

Vethalo half-somersaulted in the air, and dove the next leg of the way down. Looking to his immediate left, he saw his enemy, and his enemy saw him. The bandit was falling feet first, and Vethalo head first. They could both now see the forest floor.

Vethalo fastened his hands around a branch, and swung around it completely, trying to ignore the wrenching pain that accompanies almost having one's arms ripped from one's sockets. This was good for two reasons: it slowed him down and allowed the bandit to land first, but without enough time to avoid Vethalo, and it also let Vethalo turn over and hit the floor feet first, and with much better aim.

Vethalo landed on his assailant's neck a second later. Hard. The ensuing crunch nearly made him vomit. The good news was the attacker was dead, the immediate threat, gone. Now Vethalo felt he had truly earned the badge that sat on his chest. He removed the mask from his foe and saw to his horror, that the elf had four eyes with red irises.

Surveying his surroundings, Vethalo's mood took a turn for the worse. He was on the very floor of the forest. He had never been there, but he knew it by the giant roots of his home city and the brown, chunked powder that could only be "dirt." What if this chief's subordinates appeared and saw Vethalo standing over his corpse? Worse, what if he never found his way back up to civilization, and out of gang territory? Suddenly, those issues were pushed to the back of his mind by a pair of giant yellow eyes piercing the thick fog that surrounded him.

Vethalo didn't like the sound of that growl. He backed up nervously, drew his bow and cocked an arrow. The tall elf tripped backwards over his fallen foe, and saw from his position that the body turned to wisps of black smoke, perhaps even literally to shadow, and became lost in the night. That was good, he guessed. Then the eyes came closer, and two rows of seven inch teeth appeared out of the fog.

Things were not looking up for Lieutenant Vethalo.


	2. Chapter 2

Greetings once more. Um, chapter one has the disclaimer. Go there to read it. Not here. There.

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Dusk 

II

_"The First's wisdom lives on." "And the Cabal is eternal."  
- Cabal rite of departure from the Second_

"Big brother? Big brother, Master Elrid told me to wake you." Voice. Real. Feminine. Familiar. Allied. Skavalon gave the voice the courtesy of a stir, but nothing more. "You're going to be late. Master Elrid scheduled a fight for you; it's in an hour and a half." A fight? Skavalon didn't recall such a thing. This was just another attempt by Elrid to catch him off guard. Eldrid, the Master of the Games, was constantly scheduling Skavalon for fights and conveniently forgetting to notify him in a thinly veiled attempt to tip the scales in the house's favor. While under the First, the goal was purely to make money for the Cabal, the Second saw the pits as a business separate from the rest of the Cabal's functions, turning it into more of a gambling hall that reported to the Cabal.

Eldrid had been trying for years, ever since the first match Skavalon fought in Cabal City's arenas and coliseums, to catch the dementist with his guard down before a fight. It had only worked once, four years ago, and Skavalon had sworn it would never happen again. He was not about to go back on his word.

He sat upright in bed and shook his black dreadlocks out. His sunken features, coupled with his mild hangover and overall grogginess, gave his face a slightly emaciated appearance. "A fight? What kind?" he inquired of the young woman he recognized as Sailen, an inferior by five years (perhaps), give or take a month…two, three maybe. It mattered not, and as a result, Skavalon never inquired. The point was she was inducted into the Cabal after Skavalon was, so he outranked her.

"Not much…" Sailen sighed. "It's a two-on-two against two war-shamans, both from the 'Flats, and the Second expects us to win." The savages of the Western Salt Flats were formidable allies, but surprisingly unworthy enemies.

"If that's the best the so-called Master can give at me, the man is more senile than I give him credit for."

"Might I remind you what made him powerful, older brother?" Sailen requested. Inferiors were forbidden to order anything of their superiors, merely suggest or request things. Despite the obvious purpose, this was a request, so Skavalon reminded himself both of Eldrid's less-than-scrupulous rise to his position and of his resolution not to kill Sailen unless the situation truly warranted it. She was one of the few people willing to so much as enjoy his company; for some reason she delighted in his morbid quips, sordid stories, snide comments, and obvious vehement dislike of human companionship.

Skavalon neatly slipped on his black silk shirt and toughened leather boots and wrapped a sheet of black cloth over his shoulders and down his back, this mantle also covering the lower half of his face. He threw some coin, drink, and exotic-looking weapons haphazardly into a bag and set lazily out of his apartment, Sailen following along two steps behind.

Fights didn't thrill Skavalon as they once had. He just about knew that he was going to win every time; whether his partner helped him or not, there was scarcely an opponent in the Cabal circuit capable of staring him straight in the face, let alone one who presented any sort of challenge.

The dementist sniffed and Sailen's big, blue eyes shifted as the two walked through the crowded, stinking streets of Cabal City. Vendors peddling their wares shouted above each other, Second Order priests squawked about Akroma's second coming, while Cabal clerics of equal or greater fanaticism prophesized Kuberr's resurgence. To no one's particular surprise, a brawl between the opposing cults broke out in the middle of the square, and Skavalon paid little heed, except to stealthily pour a little bit of oil from his flask under the feet of one of the bigger Akromans. Sailen chuckled to him gleefully. "Why do you do this sort of thing?" she asked, unable to conceal her admiration.

Skavalon didn't afford her an answer, not that he needed to. Sailen was perfectly aware of his _modus operandi_, he knew that, and she knew he knew that. It was an acquaintance of such magnitude that made the young caster and her "other master" a formidable force in the pits; any fool from outside the city who placed a bet on the duo's opponents would learn his lesson both from chastisement by local bettors and from the battle's results.

Passing by a simple but familiar food counter, a barrel-chested fan - and also one of Skavalon's favorite cooks - yelled out to him. "Skavalon! Knock them dead out there!"

"Sorry, Ranem, I don't feel like using weights today."

"Of course," Sailen added quietly, "The phrase 'sic twisted abominations on them dead' doesn't quite slide from the tongue as easily."

Skavalon smiled at his partner's little joke, and then deftly caught a flying kebob flung his way by Ranem. "You owe me if you lose today, little brother!"

"I haven't owed you nigh on four years now; I don't intend to start again!" Skavalon shot back.

Ranem guffawed at that fact, and Skavalon dwelt glumly on how annoying he found him, that inspiration for coopers everywhere, as he gnawed at the kebob. Despite the man's utter lack of conversational aptitude, Ranem was an exquisite short-order cook, so Skavalon forgave the man for his shortcomings. This time.

The pair continued to the Calchexan Arena, one of Cabal City's largest and most elaborate stadiums, named for the Cabal First, a man whom that stadium suited perfectly. Today, the First was long deceased and the Second, a man who seemed only slightly less immortal and a good deal more immoral, had taken his place in a rather ugly power struggle--if it could be called a struggle, that is, as it was more like a power snatch. Even so, he still was not completely supported by the Cabal, as he had dissidents in Aphetto and in the outermost reaches of the Cabal's influence.

Sailen easily pushed open a wooden door that led into a small room and held it open for her superior. This was the holding room, the place where combatants waited and prepared for the upcoming match. In keeping with the room's purpose, Skavalon drew a six-inch rod from a pouch at his waist and twirled it expertly in his hand.

The rod was black, but its color could scarcely be described by our words. No word in our language seems foul enough, black enough to describe a weapon such as this one, solid nothing, the brainchild of the great wizard Seryviras, the product of his sweat, blood and tears, his dedicated labor. After two thousand years and ten generations of Seryvirans, their masters vision came to life. The story of Seryviras is long and tangled indeed, a story otherwise for another day, but as he relates to this rod, one must understand his vision to understand this tale.

Magic, from conjuring to card tricks, was always one thing: a quest to do the impossible. Seryviras, ever ahead of his time came upon a great and unforeseeably terrible string of ideas in his studies: the idea of harnessing nothing. At the very lowest point in his life, he had an epiphany. "When nothing is in your grasp, nothing is beyond your grasp," he later wrote. The most accepted interpretation of this is that, when one has accomplished nothing, one has everything to accomplish and an inability to lose anything, a principle employed by gamblers to this day. Whether Seryviras was an avid gambler is a debatable notion, though most evidence seems to point to its truthfulness.

The concept, in its entirety, is far too complex for the mortal mind, but the basic idea is as follows. No one thing is capable of performing everything. Thereby, nothing is capable of performing everything. By Seryviras' theory, he needed only to harness nothing to accomplish everything. For many long years he toiled over failed experiments, and pored over countless theoretical tomes, from great thinkers of all different planes of existence. In the end, Seryviras gave up all hope. He sorrowfully accepted that, despite his best efforts, he had not harnessed nothing, he had not harnessed anything for that matter. What truly happened then has long since been lost to legend, but it is said that when Seryviras finally embraced the nothing he had accomplished, the nothingness simply materialized. A week later, Seryviras was found dead in his study with a small, jet-black book cradled in his arm. The rod, like the legend, was lost to time.

Eventually, a group of magi discovered Seryviras' tomb, as well as the journals he kept. However, years of rot left little more than a few crucial aspects and diagrams readable, and not all of these were of the fabled rod which he created. This, however, was enough for those magi to perform Seryviras' experiments, both those pertaining to the rod and those pertaining to metamagical theory. With a few minor changes, many of these theories became respected laws of metamagic. The Rod of Seryviras, however, remained an unattainable paradox, as very little about it was recovered from his journals.

Seryviras' followers remained obsessed over the problem posed by the Rod for almost two centuries, when one of them fiercely exclaimed the obvious truth no one wanted to admit: they had accomplished nothing. With that one admission, breakthrough after breakthrough appeared to them, and not long after, they managed to forge the Rod of Seryviras.

Soon afterward, however, the Order stormed the Seryvirans' keep and stole much of their research, which was subsequently stolen by the newly formed Raven Empire. Many of these secrets were shared with the Cabal, who had helped the Empire in its rise to power. One of these items was the Rod of Seryviras, which was offered as a prize in a small tournament of Cabal City's house fighters. Skavalon emerged victorious, although the resulting effort and partying would leave him unconscious for three days. He rarely used the "Nothing Stick," as he called it, in his fights, preferring instead to use it during his actual profession: assassination.

Holding it still, he focused his energies into the rod, and it morphed into a rapier of exacted, perfect size, shape and weight. He cleaved the arm from an imaginary foe before willing the rapier into a dagger, the dagger into a censer, and the censer back into the rod. After returning the rod, he began to meditate, scanning the reaches of his mind for his nightmares, creatures made from the essence of his sanity.

Sailen, meanwhile, ran through her normal magical drills; jumping a small dark flame from one finger to the next, transmuting a small piece of cloth, and other simple feats of prestidigitation. She then sat at a grindstone and pulled a set of goggles down over her pale blue eyes. Spinning the grindstone, Sailen drew a short sword from its sheath and began to sharpen it to a fine edge and point, not just to hone the blade, but also to grind away the blood stains.

Five minutes into the holding, an attendant ushered them into the arena. In the corridor leading out to the floor, Skavalon gave twenty silver to the attendant, saying, "Put the money on us. You'll get ten percent of the cut." The attendant bowed and left, but not before catching a glint of Skavalon's chain in the passageway's torchlight. He had seen enough fights to learn that the one deadliest thing in the dementist's arsenal was the slim mithril chain he could whip out at a moment's notice, despite that it was threaded through a belt loop several times.

A portcullis at the end of the hall opened and the team of Cabalists stepped out onto the black, red, and gold sand, arranged in an elaborate pattern of whorls and swirls on the floor, spiraling to a congenial point in the arena's center. Walking out on the other side of the arena was a hulking orcish male with dull green skin, a jutting jaw, and battle armor made of an amalgam of wood, leather, and steel. His partner was a human male, lean, scraggly, and muscular, though almost a head shorter than the orc. The human wore a worn, patched robe, adding to the man's shaggy appearance, but Skavalon was positive he was wearing some kind of extra padding underneath it.

"WELCOME, ONE AND ALL," a voice boomed through the coliseum's network of echo chambers built into the stands, "TO THIS, THE OPENING MATCH TO TODAY'S BOUT BETWEEN THE WIZARD VIVERUS AND THE GREATEST HORDE THE CABAL HAS TO OFFER!"

_Opening for a wizard_, Skavalon sighed. _At least Elrid managed to degrade me today_.

"THE COMPETITORS IN THIS BOUT ARE TWO WAR-SHAMANS FROM THE WESTERN FLATS, GORAAK AND MARKAN!" The crowd was a mix of cheers and jeers, even a few pieces of food were flung at them. Goraak the orc – at least it seemed like the orc was Goraak; it was an orcish name – slammed his iron staff on the ground, creating a deafening boom that instantly silenced the crowd. In response, Sailen once again lowered her goggles and Skavalon began preparations for their introduction. "AND THEIR OPPONENTS, THE CABAL'S OWN SKAVALON AND SAILEN!"

The cheers of the crowd ringing in his ears, Skavalon stepped out to the center of the arena and extended his arms in front of him, his hands radiating with a dark glow. Turning around in a slow circle, he created a ring of dark energy about six feet in diameter in midair. He guided the ring to the ground, where it immediately created leylines along the whorls that made up the sand's pattern. The dark light sprouted up from the borders as though making a maze, within the walls of which were visible every perversion of every creature, humanoid or not, bathed in unholy energies. Then, the beasts leapt forth from the walls, letting out an instant's scream, and evaporating as quickly as they arrived. While Markan flinched, the orc stood his ground. This one would certainly be the tougher foe.

The dementist walked back to his side of the battleground just as the prep bell was starting to sound. Skavalon didn't feel the need to prepare, just to talk with Sailen about the match. "Keep the human close and the orc at a distance; we'll save him for later."

Sailen nodded as the starting bell rang heavily. The shamans immediately drew a simple design in the sand with their staves and slammed them in the middle of it. Four large, sinewy frog-like beasts with brown skin erupted from the ground - anurids. Skavalon sighed at this idiocy; summons were an old, tired pit trick used to tip the odds in the summoners' favor. Sailen tore out a dagger with each hand and charged the nearest anurids as they began their charge, both parties kicking up sand behind them. As they met, Sailen turned sideways to her attackers and held her daggers out, letting the frogs scrape against the blades. Quickly touching the anurids' blood with her fingers, she performed a few simple hand motions and the blood on her blades and fingertips dissolved away, as did the anurids' flesh.

Skavalon smiled at his partner as the anurid husks rotted away not fifteen feet in front of him, the smell of decaying frog flesh singeing his nostrils. He decided that if they were going to try a summoning, he might as well play their game, toy with them a while. His hands glowed with the same energy as when he presented his ghoulish display to the shamans. Skavalon then slammed them down on the ground, and a large, broad, clawed hand erupted from the sand in front of one of the remaining anurids. The anurid stood stock still, paralyzed with fear, as the hand came down on its head and smashed it against the ground.

As the hand began to wrench the rest of the horror it belonged to from the ground, Skavalon fell backward, dazed. Looking around, he noticed the human's staff smoking with magical energy. Skavalon having lost his concentration on the summoning from the magical blast, the horror receded into the sand, leaving little trace of its existence aside from the anurid laying on the arena floor with a crushed skull.

"Sailen, get the human, now!" Skavalon yelled. His partner nodded as she sidestepped the one remaining anurid and sent her sword through its back, paralyzing it.

"It's still alive if you want it!" Sailen offered. Skavalon shook his head, he hadn't found a creature worthy of being turned into a nightmare in months. He sent a bolt of dark energy lancing through the frog's skull and charged Goraak. Sensing this, the orc readied another spell and hurled it at Skavalon, this time a fireball. In mid-charge, he whirled around, the magical fire glancing off his cloak, reputed to have been made by a Raven Empire elf. While his back was to the orc, Skavalon whipped three daggers out of a pouch in his sash, and turning, launched them straight for him.

Slamming his staff into the ground, a pillar of sand erupted in from Goraak, deflecting all three daggers from their current trajectory. Skavalon snarled. He recanted what he thought about the shamans as adversaries. He glanced quickly at Sailen to see how she was progressing with Markan.

She seemed to be having little trouble. Sailen was slicing at Markan, who parried one carefully placed swing after another, though he was still on the defensive. He then launched a blast of force at the arena floor, propelling both shaman and assassin backward, though since Sailen was unprepared for this turn of events, she lost her grip on her sword, and it dropped not far from where the blast hit.

While Sailen was regaining her composure, Markan was busy scrawling a sigil in the sand, and it looked to be a complex one, a sign Skavalon recognized through years of studying the shamans as a Spirit-Drawing icon, designed to create form of the essence of whatever environment the shaman was in. Considering that this was a place where blood was regularly shed and death was abundant, whatever this spirit was, it wasn't going to make things easy for the two Cabalists.

Whipping out his chain and quickly linking a small hooked weight to it, Skavalon lashed it at Sailen's sword, now standing hilt-up in the ground. With flawless technique, the chain was wrapped around the sword's hilt and the hook latched onto a link in the chain. One well-angled yank later, the sword was in the air and spinning in the air over Skavalon's head, being twirled expertly by the elder Cabalist. He had made a mistake in assuming the orc was the bigger threat.

He would fix that mistake right away.

Letting the chain free of the twirling hand and extending his other arm, loosening his grip on the chain, Skavalon sent Sailen's blade screaming toward Goraak's head, embedding itself in his skull. Skavalon tugged at the chain and the sword slipped free as Goraak slumped to the sand, assuredly deceased.

The dementist glanced over at the summoning symbol Markan had drawn. It was glowing with a dark light, but nothing seemed to be coming of it yet. Skavalon threw Sailen's sword back to her, with the chain still looped around it. Sailen touched the orc blood on the blade, soaking it into her skin. Her muscles suddenly exploded in size to the point of raw grotesqueness. She brought Skavalon's chain across her body, launching Skavalon at Markan much as he did with her sword. Kicking his foot out, Skavalon brought the spiked front of his boot crashing into Markan's temple. Skavalon acknowledged the cheers from the crowd, pumping his fist in the air as he removed his boot from the shaman's head.

"Big brother?" Sailen asked as her temporary orcish muscles receded as she snapped him out of his euphoria of another quick victory. "This fight isn't over yet."

Skavalon whirled around to see Markan's summoning circle expand to almost five times its original diameter. Two large arms, seemingly made of stone and weapons, as long as Skavalon was tall, and thick as tree trunks emerged from the portal. Running through each arm like veins was a stream of red energy. Its hands, stone gargoyle heads, slammed into the ground and lifted the rest of the body up out of the portal. Then, Skavalon saw another set of hands, more natural in appearance, attached to a hunched body at the top of which was a leonine head. Covering the spirit's body were ornate designs, embedded weapons of all sorts, and the recurrent veins of blood-like energy. Throwing its head back, the pit spirit let out a deafening roar and its eyes turned into voids of darkness.

Skavalon decided it was time to use the rod. Drawing it, he transformed it into a simple dagger held tip-down. Charging at the spirit from behind, he leapt up onto its back with an almost inhuman bound. Slamming the dagger into the creature's back, he lengthened its blade to a length of almost six feet, so that the tip lay exposed in the spirit's chest. The spirit didn't seem to notice as it advanced on Sailen. Skavalon placed his hand at the top of its head and sent a blast of energy straight down. The blast tore a hole in the spirit's head, but it didn't seem to mind. Its gargoyle hands reared up over the dementist and descended on him. "Kuberr, help me," Skavalon said as he drew his blade from the spirit's chest and charged one of the heads with the intent of cleaving it in two and jumping through the resulting gap.

Skavalon's blade cut through the gargoyle head like a hot knife through butter. It didn't make a difference what it was though, sand or stone, the Rod of Seryviras would cleave it clean in two if its master so chose. And he did.

He landed less than gracefully and decided that today was not the day for showmanship. He had gotten his morning off to a rough start, and Eldrid hadn't made it any better with this surprise bout. It wasn't really Markan's fault that Skavalon was having a bad day, and he was clearly in need of more mana before he could defend himself from just about anything. These facts however, didn't stop Skavalon from advancing on the shaman any more than Markan's pitiful pleas for mercy, or shortly afterward his inhuman wails of agony.

"Sailen, the spirit!" Skavalon ordered his partner sharply. Sailen charged the spirit at its fallen point - the cloven gargoyle head. The blood-like energy that flowed from the sundered head was quickly disappearing. Catching a wisp of it in her hands, Sailen absorbed the energy into her hands, finding it was unadulterated red mana, mana of power, fire, and rage.

She channeled the mana into the tips of her fingers and threw spikes of it at the spirit. They ripped through its chest and arms, but aside from the holes, the spirit appeared unaffected. "Don't toy with it!" Skavalon yelled at her. "Just kill it!"

Sailen didn't want to have to do this; on this scale it would cost her several hours' worth of consciousness, but it was an order from a superior, so she had to obey it. She leapt onto the spirit's back and searched its skin for a vessel close enough to the surface; a dagger could only go so far into metal and marble. The young Cabalist smashed the tip of her dagger into what looked to be a promising location, and it was. As soon as Sailen drove her blade into the creature's back, red mana began to leak from the crack in its skin. Placing her hand over the crack, she muttered an incantation and the mana flowed straight through her.

The spirit let out an ear-splitting roar of such an agony that can only be caused by one's blood being yanked out through one incision in the skin. Burning pain immediately shot through Sailen as well, through her arms, moving into her chest and working up her neck. The agony nearly blinded her, and she bit her lip to prevent from screaming, despite that it was starting to bleed.

Skavalon, meanwhile, slowly, maliciously, advanced on Markan, whose face was bloody, broken, and nigh unrecognizable from the orc's, save for his build and garb. The dementist held the Rod of Seryviras pointing at Markan's heart. An instant later, the six-inch rod had turned into a four-foot spear impaling the shaman through the chest.

Skavalon turned to check on Sailen's progress. The spirit was faltering and had stopped flailing as much as it had been. It finally tipped forward, dead (or at least what passed for dead in its case), with Skavalon's partner rolling off its back.

"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN OF ALL RACES, I GIVE YOU THE FIGHT'S VICTORS, SKAVALON AND SAILEN!" The crowd let out another cheer, but for Sailen and Skavalon, it fell on deaf ears. Sailen lay unconscious on the arena floor, being attended to by two pit medics, and Skavalon could only brood over the events of the fight.

"Opening for a sorcerer. Badly. How much can my dignity falter in one day?" He sneered, insulted. In the center of the ring, a cloud of blue smoke billowed up from nowhere, and a man with stark features, including wild blonde hair, a sharp, angular face, a longish nose, and a slightly jutting jaw, materialized from it, snatched his staff out of it, and shaped the rest into a "V," which promptly went up in flames, to thunderous applause. The crowd was not particularly impressed by this trick, but by those his very presence promised were soon to come.

Skavalon assumed this to be the wizard Viverus, whom his fight was the opening for. He spit into the sand and headed for one of the doors leading out of the pit. Turning, he saw the medics carrying Sailen out of the arena, evidently satisfied with what they saw, which either meant she'd be fine and vivacious within the next couple of days, or she'd be fine and necrotic within the same span of time. The dementist silently hoped for the former - it would be a shame to lose a valuable partner like Sailen.

At the mouth of the corridor leading out of the arena, the attendant appeared with Skavalon's winnings in a small sack. The dementist snatched it away angrily and snapped, "Tell the Second that I want a fight with that wizard in two days in the Grand Coliseum." Taking a deep breath, he continued, "I assume you took your cut already." The attendant nodded. "That's being a good Cabalist." The attendant nodded and rushed away.

Skavalon decided to get one last look at the wizard before turning around. To his surprise, the wizard hadn't moved, remaining near the center of the arena. As Skavalon turned to a corridor leading to his private box, he heard the sound of several dozen chariots crashing to the arena floor. He rushed up to his viewing platform. Skavalon boarded it and a second attendant, an enslaved Pardic lithomancer, flew it upward over the arena. The dementist looked down at the scene below, but he could scarcely believe it.

In addition to at least three dozen hellhound-driven chariots, there were five large dragons circling the arena. One belched a jet of fire directly at Skavalon's platform. He flinched, throwing his cape in front of himself to shield himself from the blast. Skavalon found that he felt no heat from the blast. He left that mystery to solve itself and instead gazed astounded.

There had not been a true dragon on this continent in nearly a millennium. There had been drakes, dragonkin, but never true _dragons. _But there above the arena flew five of them. They must have been captured by _thousands_ of Cabalists, taken from all the furthest reaches of Dominaria. They flew around and breathed fire at the audience, which revealed the shape of a giant purple dome that would protect the audience from the fight, and prevent any rowdiness from spilling over into the rest of Cabal City.

Skavalon smiled. If the Cabal felt confident enough to send in five dragons and more than thirty chariots against this wizard, it meant one of two things: either they were confident in Viverus' ability and they stood to make a profit from these long odds, or the wizard wasn't as great as he assumed and that he was an enemy of the Cabal that needed to be eliminated.

_So_, Skavalon thought, _I might never get my fight with this wizard_. _At any rate, I don't plan to miss this._


End file.
